Rescued
by entallat
Summary: A surprise is hidden within the walls of an orbital station. Trip, Malcolm, Hoshi and T'pol investigate.
1. Chapter 1

Note: This is the first ever bit of fanfic I've tried to write, though it's not the first I *finished*. I hope I uploaded and set the ratings correctly.

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"Ow!"

"Sorry."

"Bloody hell, Trip!"

"I said I was sorry!"

"Why do I let you talk me into things like this? And for that matter, why is it you're always the one on top? You're taller and weigh more than I do!"

"Just hold still, wouldja? I'm almost in."

"You could have at least removed your boots."

"I'm almost ..."

"Would you just hurry this up? You're going crush me."

"Well, ya know, I could get there faster if you could just push..."

With a growl, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed obliged, placing his palms on the soles of the other man's boots and giving him a rough shove. With it, Commander Trip Tucker disappeared into the ceiling vent.

Banging and clanging sounds could be heard for a moment as Trip turned around in the confined space of the orbital station's air vent. Oriented, he poked he head back out of the vent and was rewarded with a glare from Enterprise's Armory Officer, who was rubbing bruised shoulders. Giving Malcolm an apologetic look the engineer turned his head towards the others in the room. "Okay, I'm in. Now where exactly did you two hear that sound?"

Malcolm tilted his head and gave Ensign Hoshi Sato and SubCommander T'pol a similar questioning look. T'pol stood with arms latched behind her back, eyebrows climbing to her hairline, and Hoshi stood with mouth slightly agape. For a long moment the women just stared at the two men.

"Hoshi?" Trip prompted. "T'pol?"

"Um, right." Hoshi murmured. "It's right about here, Commander," she continued a little louder, crouching down next to the wall and placing a palm against the surface, near the floor. She cocked her head slightly, eyes losing focus as she tried to concentrate on the faint sound.

"I concur," added T'pol, moving closer to Hoshi and gazing with Vulcan calm at the spot where the linguist had placed her palm. "The sound is not regular, but seemingly quite random. A high pitched burst every few seconds."

Malcolm narrowed his eyes as he considered the possibilities. A bomb? Electronic surveillance? He couldn't hear anything, but knew that didn't mean much. Vulcan hearing was considerably more acute than human hearing, and Hoshi had exceptional hearing and a trained ear as well. He had no doubt that the two women heard something unusual behind the walls of the alien station. Scanners had proven useless; something in the metallic composition of the walls blocked their scans. That fact set Malcolm's nerves on edge. He was regretting letting the engineer get the better of his judgment. It should be himself up there, not Trip. The station was a way station for dozens of species in this sector. Any number of them could have reason to plant listening devices, for any number of purposes. And a few might have reason to plant something far more lethal. They were far too close to Orion space for Malcolm's comfort. And if the sound was a timer on an explosive device ...

"I don't hear anything yet," Trip said before Malcolm could give voice to his reservations. "But then you two have better hearing than anyone else on Enterprise," he added, unknowingly echoing Malcolm's earlier thoughts. "Just hang on a sec." Trip disappeared into the vent and the room reverberated with clanging sounds as he turned around in the vent again.

He poked his head out once more. "Okay, just stay there a minute," he directed Hoshi. He looked at the where she was pointing, then disappeared into the vent. Then poked his head out again and looked, then disappeared again. And again.

Malcolm was suddenly stuck with the thought of one of those ridiculous American carnival games. What was it called? Whack-a-mole? He struggled to stifle a laugh just as his rubbing connected with a spot on his clavicle bruised by Trip's boots. The strangled groan caught everyone's attention.

"Are you all right Lieutenant?" T'pol enquired.

"I'm fine," Malcolm muttered. Trip looked at him curiously, then addressed the two women again. "Okay, I think the sound's coming from a narrow shaft, just a few meters ahead. I'm going to check it out."

"Commander," Malcolm hurried to try to reclaim the situation before the engineer proceeded. "I really should be the one to check this out. We could be dealing with a ... "

"I'm already up here, Malcolm. It doesn't make sense for us to switch places right now," Trip interrupted. At Malcolm's determined look, Trip sighed. "I'm not going to touch anything. I'm just gonna have a look. And if it's something dangerous, Lieutenant ... " Trip added the rank to make the statement official, "... we'll switch places. I promise."

Malcolm sighed. "Be careful," he warned.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Thank you for your kind reviews! I'm so glad you liked the start of the story. I hope I can keep it up.

I thought I should mention that the inspiration for this story was a real event. It happened when I was in my junior high school science class (a couple of decades ago now, oy). We heard a noise in the walls and (instead of getting the janitor or teacher) one of the boys crawled partway up into a drop ceiling (not into any long alien ductwork!) in order to ... well. You'll see.

--

Commander Trip Tucker wriggled his way forward along the slick surface on his elbows and knees, a mini flashlight clenched between his teeth. The ventilation shaft was surprisingly large, almost as wide as that duct he and Malcolm had crawled through on that alien space station not so long ago. It was certainly cleaner.

The memory made him come to an abrupt halt. The last time he'd done something like this he and the Lieutenant had been transported back onto the bridge of Enterprise. They'd both received a serious dressing down from Captain Archer. He winced at the memory and rubbed his face. It hadn't been one of his finer moments. And the Captain had made an excellent point at the time; they could have been transported directly out into space.

Trip took the flashlight out of his mouth and held it up in his right hand to get a better look around at the shiny metallic walls. If he'd been anywhere else he might have thought they were made of aluminum but - he set the flashlight down and unzipped a pocket on his uniform to pull out a scanner - these walls had proven impenetrable to scans. Some kind of metallic alloy he'd never seen before.

Scooting over to the left and laying on his side, he ran the scanner along the opposite wall, and then examined the readings. Nope. He couldn't see a damn thing through the metal. Though he knew T'pol, Hoshi and Malcolm were just on the other side, their bio signs didn't register, even faintly. He couldn't hear them either.

He pointed the scanner in the direction he was headed, and then looked at the readings. Nothing. Just traces of oxygen, nitrogen, and the sorts of things you'd expect to find in the musty air of a ceiling vent on an alien orbital space station. As if by suggestion he sneezed, and the sound reverberated through the metallic tunnel, loudly and grossly distorted, making him wince once more. With a frustrated huff, he stuffed the useless scanner back into his pocket and zipped it shut. Grabbing the flashlight, he resumed his forward momentum. If he got transported out, he could only hope that it was into the next room.

At least his eyes could tell him something. At first glance the tunnel seemed to be perfectly smooth, stretching out horizontally in front and behind him. But as he inched along, Trip could see thin mesh grates embedded in the ceiling, sides and floor, about every yard or so. Pointing the flashlight at one and peering through the thin mesh, he could see what looked to be another tunnel. He looked through another. Same thing. Damn, was this station made of Swiss cheese?

The engineer shook his head and started to move forward again, but the knee of his uniform caught on the edge of one of the mesh grates in the floor. He heard the fabric rip as he lifted his leg and the grate flew up, landing with a metallic sound against the opposite wall. He frowned and picked it up, turning it around in his hand. The thin metal had twisted as easily as a low gauge chicken wire. He pulled the scanner out again. Yup. It was the same stuff as the slightly higher gauge that made the walls. Damn, but he'd love to get this back to Enterprise and try to figure out the alloy's mixture. He wondered if the metal would liquefy, and if it would still be impenetrable to scans if sprayed in a thin coating, like on the hull of a shuttle. He grinned. Malcolm would love to get his hands on this stuff too.

A sound startled him from his musings. It was long, high pitched, and oddly haunting, obviously distorted by the echo effect of the metallic maze he was crawling through, and nothing like the short high-pitched bursts that T'pol had described. His heart pounding, he dropped the grate and slid forward again on elbows and knees. A second, shorter and sharper sound pierced the air a moment later. Both seemed to be coming from just ahead, just another few feet at most.

His right arm almost slid right into the hole in the floor, invisible as it was until he was right on top of it. Scrambling for balance, he lifted his arm and shoulder out of the hole. The mesh grate on this junction was missing. He grabbed an edge of the vent with one hand and shined the flashlight down into the hole with the other. The light barely reached the bottom of the narrow shaft. He could just make out the twisted remains of the mesh that had once covered the hole at the north end, a few meters down. Shining the flashlight into the opposite corner and peering into the dimly lit space he saw the source of the mysterious sounds.

Trip grinned and ducked his head.


	3. Chapter 3

Sorry about ending that last one on a cliff hanger and then taking twice as long as I intended to finish this. For some reason I struggled with fleshing out this last bit, despite having written most of it last month! Hopefully I got Hoshi and Travis's voices correctly at last. Thank you all who hung in there to read the conclusion to this short fic.

Oh, and the equipment that Trip uses here is pretty much the same as those classmates of mine used to do, well, exactly the same thing.

Finally, here it is - the conclusion.

----

Ensign Hoshi Sato pressed her ear to the wall where she knelt near the floor. The room was quiet enough that she could make out the sounds a little better than before, but still she could detect no discernable pattern. The walls seemed to distort the sound as well, and the communications officer was perplexed.

A shadow passed over her for perhaps the fiftieth time and she resisted the urge to look up. It'd just be Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, pacing the length of the room. Again. SubCommander T'Pol was standing quietly by the room's only piece of furniture - a tall storage locker, empty save for a couple of cardboard boxes, a handful of wire coat hangers and some thermal blankets - absorbed in something on a PADD.

This time, however, the shadow stopped. Hoshi looked up.

"Can you hear him?" The security officer looked concerned.

"Trip?" When Malcolm nodded, she shook her head, "No sir. I think I could hear him moving up there earlier, but I'm not sure. These walls ..." she shook her head again. "All I hear right now are the sounds from before. They're very faint and," she tapped the spot on the wall, "just below this spot. I'm sure of it."

Malcolm nodded and resumed his pacing. Hoshi pressed her ear to the wall once more.

***

The station's quartermaster had ushered them to this space with hurried apologies. An ion storm had caught several vessels, including Enterprise for all that it hand longer range sensors, completely unawares. Enterprise had sustained little damage, but found herself providing assistance to several nearly crippled vessels. Certainly the ongoing repairs to four cargo freighters, including the _E.C.S Horizon_, were a plausible explanation for the rather hasty reception and hurried indication of a room they could use for cargo transfers.

Still, it made Malcolm edgy.

The _Horizon_, like an increasing number of freighters, frequently used this orbital station as a stopover on their route. In fact, the _Horizon_ had been docked here little more than a week ago. Competition on the routes closer to Earth had driven more of them farther out here and closer to Nausicaan and Orion territory. Although Malcolm had no previous contact with the Orions, the security briefs he'd read gave him a fair idea of the potential danger. The Nausicaans he was familiar with, and it wasn't that great a stretch to consider to possibility that they might have bugged the station in order to better plan attack runs on unsuspecting freighters.

Malcolm rubbed his bruised shoulder. What was taking Trip so blasted long? He glanced up at the opened vent in the ceiling and then along the length of the wall to where Hoshi remained crouched. His lips twisted a little as he calculated, what, maybe only a few meters? Surely the engineer had seen the source of the noise by now. Malcolm repressed a sigh of irritation. The last time the engineer had gotten it into his head to crawl through an alien space station's ductwork in search of the answer to a mystery, both of them had ended up in the Captain's Ready Room for a dressing down.

The memory brought Malcolm to an abrupt halt as he recalled the reason for that bit of disciplinary action. What if Trip had been transported out of … He grimaced and gave the ceiling another anxious glance before resuming his pacing. He didn't want to think about that possibility just yet. Dammit, he never should have allowed this. How did Trip always manage to get the better of his judgment?

"Lieutenant."

Malcolm stopped mid-pace. "SubCommander?"

"I am quite certain that repeatedly crossing the room from north to south serves no purpose in the current situation." T'Pol's voice was the essence of calm, but Malcolm could have sworn he saw a brief flash of irritation on the Vulcan's elegant features. Across the room he could see Hoshi smothering a smile. Malcolm flushed slightly and moved to lean back against one wall, crossing his arms in front of him.

Watching their Vulcan science officer, he realized with a start that she must have been thinking something along similar lines as he. After all, as ranking officer, she could have, perhaps even should have, nixed Trip's impulsive action. Perhaps Enterprise's chief engineer had a way of unsettling even her Vulcan aplomb.

The sudden swish of the door opening made Malcolm start and Hoshi jump a bit.

Ensign Travis Mayweather walked into the room. "SubCommander? Captain Archer is looking for you. He's at docking port five."

T'Pol tilted her head, "Thank you Ensign," she said and left.

"How's your family, Travis?" Hoshi asked, rising from her spot near the floor.

"They're good. The _Horizon_ didn't take nearly as much damage as the _Frontier_. They're in pretty bad shape. Mom says they're going to pitch in and help them complete their run. She doesn't want to see another family-run freighter fold, just because the consortium-owned ones can afford to upgrade their plating faster." He looked around. "What's going on? Where's Commander Tucker?"

"Right here." They all looked up to see Trip poke his head out of the vent and grin at them.

***

"Hand me that box and those coat hangers wouldja, Travis? Oh, and one of those thermal blankets."

"Wait a minute, Trip. If it's a bomb or surveillance equipment, we should exercise extreme caution before attempting to move..."

"It's not a bomb, Malcolm." Trip reassured as he reached down to snag the edge of the box Travis was lifting up to him, "Or even surveillance equipment. Trust me on this one." He looked at the coat hangers critically and then scanned the room from his elevated vantage point. "You don't happen to have any electrical tape down there, do ya?"

Travis looked around and shrugged. Hoshi shook her head. Malcolm lifted an eyebrow, "Electrical ..."

Trip interrupted with an answer to his own question. "Never mind. I'm sure I've got ..." He zipped and unzipped pockets, pulling out in turn a scanner, "some ..." a pair of pliers, "tape ..." a screw driver, "here somewhere. Ah, here we go!" He pulled a roll of back tape out of a leg pocket and tossed it into the box.

He looked down again to be met with three expressions of undisguised amusement. "What?"

"Always be prepared, Commander?" said Malcolm.

"That's a Boy Scout thing," Trip grinned at his friend, then let his accent thicken a bit. "This here's just standard engineer's survival gear." Satisfied with his collection of parts, he pulled himself all the way back into the vent. Scraping sounds could be heard as he started to push the box in front of him. He poked his head out of the vent one last time. "This may take a while." And before Malcolm could protest, or anyone could ask what he had found, Trip had disappeared again.

***

Sliding the box in front of him, Trip made his way the edge of the narrow vertical shaft again, much more quickly this time. Shoving the box aside, he lay on his side and pulled out one wire coat hanger and began to untwist and straighten it, leaving the u-shape at one end intact. He fixed an end of the electrical tape on the sharp edge of the u-shape and wrapped it, covering the sharp end and creating a sort of cushion all along the curve. Tearing the end off with his teeth, he tossed the tape back in the box and grabbed another coat hanger. He untwisted that one all the way, then pulled out his pliers and twisted the exposed end of the first hanger to one end of the second. Satisfied with the join, he lowered it into the shaft to test the length.

Another three coat hangers later, he was satisfied. Struggling back onto his stomach, he slid as far over the edge of the narrow shaft as he could, lowering his long wire hook. "Okay now. Here we go," he said softly.

***

Nearly a half hour later, T'Pol had returned, so it was four expectant faces that looked up at the opened vent as a scraping noise preceded banging ones. Suddenly a box, and then finally Trip appeared. The engineer grinned. "Hoshi, I got your noisemakers right here," he said as lowered the box down to Travis.

The lanky helmsman took the box carefully and set it on the floor, then carefully peeled back a corner of the thermal blanket that covered the box. He grinned. Hoshi peered into the box, a hand flying to her mouth as a smile erupted on her face as well. T'Pol leaned over the box and cocked one eyebrow. Malcolm leaned over and gave in to a smile as well. Commander Tucker just lay on his stomach at the edge of the vent grinning down at the group below.

Inside the box was a large calico cat, lying on her side, breathing somewhat heavily. Beside her, squirming and uttering sharp cries of hunger and annoyance at being disturbed, were six small kittens.

"Their eyes aren't even open." Hoshi breathed as she kneeled down next to the box.

"These are Terran felines?" asked T'Pol, pulling out her scanner and waving it over the adult cat.

"Yes, SubCommander," answered Travis. "And I'll bet anything that this is Patches!" He rubbed the distressed cat on the head. At T'Pol's questioning expression he added, "My friend Nora's cat. Although she's really just everybody's cat on the Horizon. Mom said that Patches was expecting kittens, but nobody's seen her for at least a week. We all just assumed she'd found some quiet spot in the cargo hold to have her litter. She must have wandered off the ship last time we were docked here." He looked closely at the kittens, "I'll bet these aren't more than 5 or 6 days old!"

T'Pol looked at her readings. "The adult female appears to be dehydrated and somewhat malnourished."

"I'm not surprised," ventured Malcolm. "If she's been trapped inside these walls for almost a week with six little ones nursing."

The four officers began to discuss the logistics of transporting the mother and her litter back to the Horizon when they were interrupted by a voice from above.

"Um, guys?" All four officers looked up at Enterprise's chief engineer, still hanging out of an open vent in the ceiling. "A little help here? It's a long way down."

Malcolm smirked, then nodded and tapped Travis on the arm, indicating the door with a jerk of his head. The two men began to leave the room.

"Whoa, wait a minute! " Trip looked at them in alarm, one leg already out of the vent. "Where the hell are you going?"

"To find something for you to stand on, Commander," answered Malcolm. "I'm not letting you mangle my shoulders again." With that, he and Travis were out the door.

Shrugging in defeat, Trip pulled his leg back into the vent and settled down to wait.

***

After several minutes of gently stroking the adult cat, Hoshi glanced up at the ceiling where Trip waited. Just then T'Pol reached down to tucked an edge of the thermal blanket better around the cat and kittens. Hoshi spied an expression growing on Trip's face, one that the bridge crew had come to know well as Commander Tucker's I'm-getting-ready-to-tease-T'Pol-again expression. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, Travis and Malcolm returned, carrying a large A-frame ladder.

"A ladder! Where did you find that? And why didn't we get that in the first place?" he asked as Travis and Malcolm set the ladder up and then held it steady.

"I think we would have had some trouble explaining what we were doing with it. Excuse us, do you have a ladder we can borrow? We'd like to check that you haven't installed listening devices, surveillance equipment or a timed detonation device inside the walls," Malcolm said as Trip climbed down from the vent.

While Travis and Malcolm folded the ladder once again and set it against the opposite wall, Trip walked over to peer inside the box. He shook his head, "I'm surprised she survived the fall." At Hoshi's questioning look, he explained. "She was at the bottom of a narrow vertical shat. It was too far for even a full-grown cat to jump out of, and too slick to catch hold of the sides. She must have disturbed the grate covering it when she walked over it and fell in…" He snapped around suddenly.

"Ah, damnit! I forgot to grab that grate!" He made a frustrated face, then waved a hand at the vent. "Malcolm, you wouldn't believe this stuff. It was a thin mesh, maybe no more than a millimeter thick and as pliable as chicken wire, but my scans still couldn't pass through it."

"Really? I wonder if it would retain those properties if …"

"... it was it was mixed into something like paint?"

"You could coat something with it. Like the hull of a ship..."

"...or a shuttlepod..."

"...and render the entire thing impervious to scans."

"I was thinking the exact same thing." Trip looked back up at the ceiling and Malcolm glanced at the ladder, now resting against the opposite wall.

As if anticipating their actions, T'Pol spoke up, "Commander. Lieutenant." The two men looked over at her. "I do not believe that the station's caretakers will appreciate the removal of pieces of their facility."

The two officers managed to look both sheepish and slightly crestfallen at the same time. "Especially without their permission," T'Pol continued as their expressions began to seem pleading. She initiated a minor mental meditation exercise, reminding herself that humans were a young and intensely curious species before she spoke again, her Vulcan composure intact, "Perhaps we should simply ask them for a sample of the alloy?" A light returned to both grey and blue eyes as Trip and Malcolm nodded.

***

It was 22:00 hours and the corridors of Enterprise were quiet. The cat and kittens had been carefully moved across the station, back to the _Horizon_ where Ensign Mayweather's mother, Rianna Mayweather, the ship's medic (and chief engineer) had carefully seen to the hydration and feeding the distressed cat and her litter.

As T'Pol rounded a corner of E deck, she could hear muffled voices floating out of the transporter room. She glanced inside to investigate.

On the transport pad was an opened case, and embedded in the padding were what appeared to be small samples of the alloy that had so intrigued Enterprise's chief engineer. Standing beside him was Enterprise's tactical officer. The two appeared to be in disagreement over something, quite possibly about how to best investigate the rather small sample they'd acquired. T'Pol briefly considered stepping in and offering a logical compromise, but stopped herself. She watched as Commander Tucker laughed, and Lieutenant Reed shook his head, smiling again. As she suspected, the argument seemed to be over as quickly as it had begun.

She continued on her way to the mess hall.

As she stepped inside, T'Pol noticed Ensign Mayweather engaged in animated conversation with Ensign Sato. T'Pol removed a mug from behind the sliding panels and set it in the dispenser. "Chamomile tea, hot." She heard a laugh and turned to see Ensign Mayweather waving his arms around his head. Ensign Sato held one hand over her mouth as she shook with laughter. Neither was aware of the SubCommander's presence. She removed her mug from the dispenser and quietly slipped out of the mess hall.

Sipping her tea, T'Pol strode towards the turbolift. Before she could reach it, clicking sounds announced the arrival of two other of Enterprise's inhabitants. She turned around smoothly and tried not to wrinkle her nose as Porthos appeared, followed closely by his owner.

"Captain."

"T'Pol. Porthos! Come here." Porthos turned around returned to his master, sitting at his feet. "Sorry about that. All is well I assume, SubCommander?" he said, bending down to rub the Beagle's ears.

"It is," she replied simply. As she watched, she was struck for the second time in one day, by the unusual bond between human's and the lesser species of their planet.

"Good. I was going to ask you about this tomorrow, but if you don't mind walking with me a bit," Jonathon indicated the corridor. Porthos jumped up and led the way.

"Of course."

"I was wondering if you've heard about these people, Betazed I think the station master called them? They're, um, what did he say again?"

"Empaths. Yes. I am familiar with their species." And she detailed what she knew as they disappeared down the corridor.


End file.
